Prophesized Child
by Taort
Summary: Rath is not actually an exorcist but basically ends up acting like one, and Wil is his stalker who gets to carry all his money for him. Ghosts and spirits au, Happy Halloween. (spoilers it gets really depressing because it's about dead people)


"Boy, it's hot out," said his traveling companion, as he pulled his scarf down from his face and Rath dismounted from his horse. Rath had grown used to the boy's unneeded comments over time, just as, he assumed, the boy had grown used to being answered with silence. There was little he could think to say in reply, except to make the equally unneeded observation that they were in the desert. "Mind if I go ahead?" Rath nodded his assent, and the boy headed for the inn, already sweeping off his hood, to ask for a room while Rath led his horse to find a spot shaded and sheltered from the wind and sand to tie her down in a town with no stables.

It was unkind of him to bring her with him into a desert, and a burden on journey. Even the boy had questioned the decision not to leave her behind in the care of another, at a place with more solid ground and greenery. But she had been with him the whole way, and he did not wish to part with her until the end of their road. He took a moment to lay his hand on her muzzle and speak in Blessed Words to her, those which the superstitious believed to be understood by all creatures, and then he took their bags from her back.

By the time he entered the inn himself, his companion was already speaking animatedly with the innkeeper, who looked faintly amused behind his frown. "Boy," he called, and gained the attention of both of them. The boy shot him a smile as he lifted up a key for Rath to see. Rath trained his eyes on him, but his peripherals caught the innkeeper's soured expression.

"Two beds," the boy said, though Rath knew it was for the sake of their present company rather than himself. This, too, like how he bought the room while Rath saw to his horse, was part of the routine they had slowly developed. Both of them were content to sleep on the ground, but buying single bed rooms had drawn wariness towards them. They would not stay in inns at all if they did not need to speak with the people in each village on good terms. The boy, who was an unpleasant surprise for every merchant they met with, hated to part with the extra cost, but eventually even he caved beneath the frequent misunderstandings.

Ones like the innkeeper's. Even with two beds, it was difficult to convince strangers that the boy was not in service to him when Rath had no name to address him by.

Rath thanked the innkeeper for their room and made a point to carry their bags the rest of the way himself.

Rath was a prophesized, one whose birth had been foretold by seers. Children born on days of prophecy were raised to travel, and upon their eleventh birthdays, were sent out from the tribe to traverse all the lands upon the earth. If the spirits willed it, they would one day return, and they would share stories of all that they had learned on their journey. It was not unheard of, or uncommon, for prophesized to bring or buy slaves along the way in order to ease their travels, or even only for a source of constance and company. Rath had not, because he meant to one of the few who would one day return, and he wished to bring back as much knowledge of the outside world as he could manage. He had thought a slave would be a distraction, but as his travels exposed him to different viewpoints and cultures, he came to understand that choosing not to take a slave was a wise decision for other reasons.

Or would have been, had he not ended up with the boy instead. Five years into Rath's journey, in lands to the south, the boy crossed his path. He was four years his junior at least, with starved shadows painted across his cheeks and a nearly wild look in his eyes, and from the moment he saw Rath he followed him. Rath assumed the boy was a vagrant who had heard stories of the prophesized; they were taught to place charity above greed, so the spirits would favor their good fortune and they would not learn a dependence on material value, and many along the way would hope to take advantage of their willingness to part with money. But he paid for the boy's meal that night, and in the morning he still followed him. He asked the boy to keep all the money he had, as a test, and the boy had continued to follow him, while Rath was left uncertain whether his purse-clutching was in the hopes of earning Rath's trust or simply in the boy's own nature.

The boy claimed to be from Bern, near where they first had met, but Rath did not fully believe him. The boy did not have the long legs or proud cheekbones of the people of Bern; as he grew older, it only became more and more apparent that he had the softer, even-proportioned look of a Lycian native. He tried to tell Rath he went by Dan, and though Rath would not speak the false name, if the boy were truly Lycian he found his motives for running from his homeland understandable; during Rath's childhood, Lycia had gone through a terrible civil war over a matter of inheritance. The city-state of Caelin and its castle stronghold, the former base of the crushed uprising, had been haunted for years following, until northern sorcerers were hired to bind the malevolent spirits who lingered and take them away from the lands. He did not intimately know the state of Lycia itself, as he had yet to pass through it, and his people told only the stories of Caelin, but he guessed the country had yet to fully recover. The boy thrived in lively crowds and places of laughter; Rath could imagine him fleeing from the suffocating air of mourning that a war left behind.

Rath had now spent half his years journeying with none but his mare beside him, and half with the boy in tow. At first, when Rath was also seen as young, there were less problems presented by the way their relationship was perceived, perhaps because they seemed closer in age, or perhaps only because they were in lands friendlier to the thought of slaves. But Rath had an older way of carrying himself, he knew, which exaggerated the difference in years between them, and soon, once he had the look of a grown adult, made them appear to be involved in something distasteful. The boy's looks did not help, he knew; he had seen enough slaves with Lycian faces in his travels to realize that the trade had a large hand in the country's rebuilding economy, and the boy's broad, sturdy shoulders could be mistaken for a laborer's instead of an archer's.

And he was attractive.

But the inconvenience of other's misgivings was outweighed. Along the way, had Rath tried to teach him useful practices, with varying success; the boy persisted to fall from a horse for years, but he could manage a decent stitch when calm, and he took to the bow as if blessed with the talent, already in the possession of a shooting glove. Hunting kept them fed, so Rath was thankful for his gift, and more thankful still that he could manage the quiet needed to not scare away prey.

More than that, however, although Rath gained cold looks, the boy could talk his way into any heart. People taught him their customs readily, if oftentimes out of an eagerness to watch him make a fool of himself, and he gathered any information of interest with ease and laughter. Their most effective source of income had been his idea, and he perpetuated their business in it all but on his own.

They had made good time on their way to the oasis town, and there was another hour or so left of daylight. Once they reached their room, Rath had just turned to the boy to suggest he visit the tavern when someone cleared their throat from the doorway. It came as no surprise, and Rath turned to meet the innkeeper's eyes as he spoke.

"That one tells me you have a way with ghosts," he said, with a jerk of his head towards the boy. Rath waited for him to continue, which seemed to aggravate him. "This inn is supposed to be haunted."

"I noticed."

Replying also seemed to aggravate him.

Privately, Rath thought the comment had been a small show of the influence the boy had on him after so long; it was an obvious one. The inn was covered in an oppressive sense of loneliness great enough to unsettle even a person with little awareness of spirits.

"How much for you to do something about it?" the innkeeper asked, tone clipped and business-like.

"Twelve dodds," the boy cut in, "plus another two or three if it's a tricky job." It was on the lower end for one of his starting offers, perhaps because the boy had caught onto the innkeeper's tone of skepticism. The innkeeper looked startled to be arguing prices with him rather than Rath, but only for a moment.

"Ridiculous," he sneered, "I wouldn't pay half that."

"Or," said Rath, before the boy could retaliate, "you can let us stay here without charge." The innkeeper hesitated, considering the offer. They would have to stay four nights for their time at the inn to be worth twelve dodds, and they no doubt looked, as most who stopped in this village must have, like the sort who were only passing through.

"Fine," he agreed. The boy shot Rath an almost offended look, but Rath did not understand how he could stand to bargain in air so thick with heat and sadness. The innkeeper dug out the three dodds already paid and offered them back to Rath, who waved them toward the boy instead.

"Where is your room?" he asked the innkeeper.

The spirits were meant to exist in harmony with one another; ghosts were those who could not release their individual emotions, and remained attached to solid people and objects rather than joining with the others in the greater will of the earth. A malevolent spirit, a true haunt, lingered only for the sake of bringing destruction and misfortune to their area of attachment and any who came near it; the spirit of the inn was not malevolent, but all ghosts were selfish.

He was right to assume it was attached to the innkeeper. As they approached his room, the sense of loneliness grew stronger and stronger, until the innkeeper opened the door and it became almost overpowering. Rath composed himself before calling out, in Blessed Words, "Why do you stay here?" To his own ear, because he had spoken them, the words sounded foreign (_ang an daiya lo?_), but to the boy and innkeeper standing behind him, and to the spirit, he knew they would sound as familiar as their native tongue.

_Brother!_ came the answer, and for a moment Rath was surprised. Spirits themselves could only speak with Blessed Words, and only if they had known any in life. Most outside of Rath's homelands did not bother with them.

His surprise did not compare to the innkeeper's, who stumbled back as if struck. The spirit let out an audible wail, and Rath traced triangles in the air, hoping to discourage her from possessing himself or the boy.

"She died in Etruria," said the innkeeper, in a weak protest. Rath did not waste the time to explain to him how distance did not matter to spirits who were unbound, instead calling out to her again.

"There is nothing for you here."

"What? She's my sister, of course there is!"

_Brother! _The ghost's voice became more frantic. Rath turned to address the innkeeper, but the boy beat him to it, catching him by the back of the shirt and pulling him away before he could do anything rash. ("Er, you know, sir, you really shouldn't encourage her.") Entrusting the boy with restraining him, Rath returned his focus to the ghost.

"You are not here," he told her, speaking each word carefully. "He cannot hold you. He cannot walk with you. He is no comfort to you. He is only a reminder of what you cannot have." The ghost screamed, conducting a fierce gust, but she was not a haunt. There was little true damage she could cause; she had no desire to hurt. Behind him, the innkeeper let out muffled shouts, but Rath persisted. "Join," he told her, "and he will join with you when it is his time."

The ghost's desperation slowed. _We will be together?_ Rath felt the echo of her loneliness ache in his chest.

"Yes," he said. She did not reply again, but slowly, all around them, the oppressive air began to lift.

Rath glanced back, and the boy released the innkeeper from some sort of chokehold to hurriedly stand. Rath suspected they scuffled enough to bruise later.

He said nothing to the brother of the ghost, withstanding his glare, and instead walked past him with a nod to the boy, who - as always - followed him.

He knew what the innkeeper had hoped for. Even if his sister was not there in body, he had hoped to at least love her spirit, and the ghost's ability to speak had misled him to think it was possible to live with her reasonably. But ghosts were, from the start, the spirits of people with unreasonable desires, and the closer they were to those desires, the more unreasonable they became. His sister would only be capable of the lucidity he hoped to see in her if they had been as far apart as they had been in life.

"She was a pretty simple girl," the boy said, on their way to the tavern across the road, and Rath silently agreed. It had been a much easier task than most. If the boy was thinking that it might have been worth the payment after all, he was considerate enough not to say it. "Or maybe," he said instead, "you're just getting really good." He must have sensed Rath's dismissal, because he kept going. "No, I really think so! I mean, you're so bad at talking to people, but even though you don't speak those Blessed Words that well, you're so good at getting through to those spirits. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but it's almost like you're better at talking to the dead than the living."

Rath was not sure how to answer that, which may have proved his point.

They stayed in the village for another day. They managed to get ahold of enough food and water for Rath's horse, and while the boy learned a dance from the local women, Rath had the time to check her hooves and brush the sand out of her coat.

As he was tending to her, a monk sought him out. "Thank you," he said. "Raymond had been troubled with thoughts of her for a long time." Rath did not know who Raymond was, but he could guess.

"They are both better off now," he said. The monk bowed his head in a nod, almost hiding behind his curtain of hair.

"He doesn't realize it yet," he murmured, "but he will one day." They stood in silence for a time, and Rath was grateful that he did not seem to be bothered by the quiet. Eventually, he turned to him, and asked to hear of the town's religious rituals.

That night, as Rath lay in bed and had just begun to slip away into sleep, the boy suddenly spoke up. "I've been thinking." Rath did not reply, but he opened his eyes, and watched as the boy sat up, propping himself up on his elbows. "About the things you said to that dead sister." He stopped, but Rath could tell he expected no reply, and was simply gathering his thoughts. "About lots of things you say to those spirits, really. All my life, I had those sorts of things the whole time... and I just never thought about it." In the dark, the boy's silhouette lifted his hands and inclined his head to stare at his palms. "And even knowing you, I still forget. It's hard _not_ to take them for granted, you know? Just simple things, like being able to touch someone. What about you? I mean, do you take them for granted?"

Rath knew the boy could be thoughtful. Beneath all his meaningless chatter, he was a certain kind of sly that called for it. But he had never shown it so clearly before, and Rath, too, had to pause to gather his thoughts.

"The most sincere way of showing thanks," he finally answered, "is to make use of all the gifts you are given." It was simply what he had been taught as a child, but the boy went silent with consideration.

"You smell like horse," the boy might have said, but Rath was already drifting off.

They left the next morning, hoping to reach the edge of the desert by the end of the following night. Rath gave Raymond their room key, with no words exchanged between them, and when he went out, the boy had already untied his mare and led her to the inn. She stubbornly disliked him, and gave a pleased snort when Rath took her reigns.

"Scarf," he reminded the boy, after their bags were loaded up. The boy let out a small yelp and quickly covered his face and pulled up his hood.

"Good thing we'll be out of the desert soon, huh?" he said, the words muffled by the scarf. Rath swung himself up onto his horse, and they started off.

They walked into a sandstorm. It did not take long for Rath to dismount; he wrapped his mare's head in cloth to protect her from the sand and began to lead her forwards, taking care not to lose his bearings. His eyes burned, uncovered and vulnerable, and it felt as if the sand pulled him backwards with every step, eliminating all his progress, but he persevered, even knowing they were still too far from the desert's end for it to make a difference.

Behind him, the boy cried out.

He started to turn her around, and quickly realized he lacked the time. "Stay here," he told her with Blessed Words, before running as best he could in the direction of the voice. The boy was already buried, but even full of sand and tears Rath's eyes were sharp; he spotted a flash of vivid color and grabbed for it, and pulled the boy up gasping and coughing, his scarf dislodged. Rath pulled the cloth up over his face in a hurried movement, and held onto his arm as he turned and rushed them back towards where he had left his horse.

They never found her.

The sun fell, and then rose. When the ground beneath the feet finally became more solid, and they started to come across small patches of green, it was already high in its arc. The boy had clung to Rath's side for the whole time, half leaning on him and half supporting him, and now dragged him down with him as he collapsed to the ground. "Let's just rest here," he said, releasing Rath's robes to rub sand off his face. Rath turned away from him and tugged his hood over his eyes to block out the light, curling in on himself.

Rath slept dreamlessly and woke to a starry sky. He roused the boy, and they reached another town by morning.

"We need new bows and arrows," the boy pointed out. Rath had remembered, but had not spoken then. He remembered that they had lost their packs, but the boy carried their money, and they could still get new supplies. He did not speak now, either. The boy seemed to understand and wandered off, so that the next time they spoke, Rath went to him.

"I asked for a map," he informed him. "We went off our intended course. Help me replan it."

"Sure," the boy said, and simply left the conversation he had been in the middle of. He did it without a thought, in order to follow Rath.

Back in their room at the inn, Rath traced his fingers over a map and voiced a rough path. "Within a few days," he murmured, "we should be in Lycia."

"I don't want to go there," the boy stated. Rath looked at him, unable to muster an expression that was not impassive. He had figured as much, but the boy had always avoided the topic until now.

"I have not been to Lycia," said Rath, words even and careful. "My journey will not be complete until I have."

Do not keep me from my home, he did not say.

He had not realized they were staring at each other until the boy looked away first, clenching his jaw and shrinking in on himself slightly. "Well," he said, "let's just figure it out along the way." Rath had no desire to put it off as he suggested. He did not run and hide the way the boy did, and he did not wish to start.

But he was tired, and nor did he wish to fight.

"There's a haunted graveyard," the boy mentioned, and Rath remembered again that they were in need of supplies.

Rath knew fully well the difference between a ghost and a haunt, but so few people outside of his homelands seemed to, he grew accustomed to understanding them interchangeably, as most did. Graveyards were common grounds for ghosts who could not let go of the passing of another; they were more likely to be a sadder, often stronger presence, stricken by love. They were usually easily convinced to pass on, much like the innkeeper's sister, in order to join with their loved ones.

He did not prepare himself for the graveyard to be truly haunted.

The moment he entered the grounds, a flash of red passed through his vision, and something slammed into his gut, knocking him off his feet. He heard the boy call his name but gave him no answer, concerning himself instead with tracing concentric triangles in the dirt beneath his fingers to momentarily halt the spirit's assault. He distantly missed his own people's clothes, which embroidered them into nearly every seam, but he had outgrown his too many years ago, and it did him no good now to think of them. The small number he managed now, however, gave him too small a reprieve, and the haunt lashed out at his hand, disrupting the whole pattern. Rath suddenly noticed both strikes had drawn blood, leaving wounds like those from a small blade.

"Stop," he spoke in Blessed Words. "I am not your enemy." The haunt's distrustful aura increased, and red remained in his peripherals, but it retreated from him far enough to allow Rath to stand and observe his surroundings.

Every grave marker was destroyed but one.

"You can join her," he said, but the air only burned with a greater sense of hatred and vengeance and failure. A wind stirred, and Rath brought up his arms just in time to guard against a flurry of gashes that had been aimed at his chest and neck. Vengeance was the key, he realized. "Is that more important than her?" The boy slammed into his side with a shout, knocking him out of the way of another gust of wind, and pinned him down to shield him.

"Stop it!" he yelled, right into Rath's face. He had no bruises, Rath suddenly noticed. "It's not going to work, can't you _hear_ him?!"

_No,_ Rath thought, _because I'm not a spirit._

"Speak my name," said the boy.

"You never told me your name," Rath replied, his arms and legs still gaining cuts. He was beginning to feel dizzy from a loss of blood, his thoughts moving into disarray. The boy laughed, and it was an echoing, empty noise.

"Don't pretend," he hissed, enunciating every word as he went. "Isn't that like lying? You're not supposed to lie, Rath, prophesized child of Sacae."

He was right.

Lyndis's story was a sad one; a half-foreign prophesized, when she reached Lycia during her journey, she discovered that she was of a noble bloodline, and found herself morally obliged to stake her claim on Caelin's throne - not only out of honesty in her roots, but also in an effort to topple their rigid, corrupted caste system. Fearing Sacaean magic, when her forces were defeated, her enemies brought in a shaman to eradicate her spirit entirely. The act so enraged her closest followers that five of them, upon their own, less careful executions, lingered as haunting spirits, and together they tore the castle down. When the sorcerers came and bound them, all to objects they had worn in life; a belt, a hair ornament, a breastplate, a glove, a headband, they took the items far away to be destroyed. It would be easy to lose track of such things, Rath had always thought, even as a child.

Rath reached out and touched his face, distantly curious if there would really be something there beneath his fingers.

You killed my horse, he wanted to say. He may have, if it were a less poor time for outbursts.

"Wil," he spoke, with no idea what it may cause, "Arrow of Caelin." And suddenly there was no boy above him, only a wind so strong and directionless that Rath had to shut his eyes. He kept them closed, suspecting there would be nothing his eyes could discern, and wished he could shut his ears as well as shrieking filled the air, one haunt tearing another apart.

The haunt's feelings of failure dissipated from the air, but Rath's were left behind, unable to shake the thought that any other outcome would have been better than _this_. His fingers trailed blindly through the dirt until they found the leather of Wil's shooting glove, and as his consciousness bled away, he traced the shape of a triangle.

He woke up in their room at the inn, Wil at his bedside. One of his hands was on Rath's shoulder, for no reason except, Rath assumed, to touch him; the other was in his glove, and Wil was staring at it. There's a lopsided, red-brown triangle on it, and Rath can only think he had not realized his hands were covered in enough blood to use as ink. "You bound me right back to it," accused the boy, who was in fact much older than Rath, and had been the whole time. Rath had not heard many stories of bound spirits growing up, but he distantly remembered that they often appeared to be the age at which they felt most helpless in life, in symbolism of their restraints.

"You killed my horse."

"I didn't _mean_ to!" Rath stared at him, and Wil shifted in his seat, shrinking in on himself like he did when they discussed the map. "I didn't. It just happened. That's how it works when you're a spirit, you know. You just think about it and it happens, and you don't get the chance to really consider it or anything." Privately, Rath thought that was probably only how it worked for haunts. "I didn't really want you to be so _upset_."

It occurred to Rath that Wil would continue on the topic if allowed, and Rath himself had no desire to pursue it. "She taught you Blessed Words," he cut in. "You've been speaking them all this time."

Wil laughed. "It's funny, all I knew were 'stop' and 'join' and 'I love you,' and suddenly I die and it's like I've never spoken a word of anything else in my life." His expression softened then, and he went back to staring at his shooting glove. "You'd have liked her, you know. Lyndis." Rath did not disagree, suspecting it to be the case as well.

He said, instead, "You do not have the right to block my journey." Wil's head snapped up, and for a moment Rath saw flickers of both starved hollows on his cheeks and dulled armor at his chest.

"Don't you know what they did to her?" he demanded, voice high with rage.

"I do," said Rath, voice calm. "You have just done the same to the spirit in that graveyard." Wil stood so suddenly he knocked his chair over, breaking it into two pieces, and clenched his hands into trembling fists.

"I'm not going to go to _Lycia_," he said, the country's name taking on a ragged sound which made Rath wonder whether mention of his haunting grounds alone was enough to break down Wil's memory of his humanity.

"I will not take you there," Rath replied.

And Wil, Arrow of Caelin, Rath's companion of five years, who was not a slave and was not truly a boy, understood. Rath saw it in his face; his expression crumpled with hurt and disappointment, and it only strengthened Rath's resolve.

"You want me to leave," Wil said, calmer now, and far more quiet.

"There is nothing for you here," Rath spoke to him, in Blessed Words. Wil's face twisted, like he wanted to smile but couldn't manage to be happy enough.

"You're wrong," he said, his tone lost somewhere between sick and hopeful. "There's _you_. I _have_ all those things, it's not the same. I'm not even clinging to the past at all, you know that!" It was true. Wil didn't cling to his past; he ran from it.

"You cannot return home," Rath explained, "and if I were to remain with you, nor could I."

"You're not really _supposed_ to," Wil insisted. "It's _if the spirits will it_, right? I'm a spirit!"

"You're malevolent."

"That doesn't matter!"

"It does," he stated, sitting up fully, despite the pain of his wounds. "How long have you been haunting me?"

Wil went very, very still. "What?"

"You brought a sandstorm," continued Rath, "and killed my horse. You brought us here, to a village with another haunt. Which you shouldn't have been stronger than," he added, "but were, because we were not the target of his rage, and at that moment, he was yours." Wil said nothing. "It was not because of Lycia," Rath murmured.

In a small, broken voice, Wil managed, "You're going to get rid of me."

"I only noticed now, but it may have been for longer. Have I left a path of misfortune behind me? We are travelers. You could have stricken each person I have spoken to with illness, and I would not know."

"Stop it!" Wil cried out. "I'm not haunting you!"

Coolly, Rath replied, "You're starting to."

He knew that Wil was thoughtful. Neither of them knew, truly, what would happen to a ghost who gained a second attachment, but Wil's lucidity was fraying rapidly, his once steady age suddenly unclear and the violence that tailed him already varying from a sandstorm to a broken chair; it was clear he would just become a simple haunt again.

Rath looked at Wil's face, and was reminded of Raymond, who had so badly wanted to live with the spirit of his sister.

"You," Wil started, then stopped, and drew a shaking breath. He turned and sat on the edge of Rath's bed, and though just from being closer to him, Rath's wounds stung more acutely, he let the spirit take his hand and intertwine their fingers. "I was _released_ in Bern. I don't really know how I got there, maybe those sorcerers got raided by a pack of bandits." Rath could not help but notice a note of glee in his voice at the idea. "But a little boy called me out, I guess by mistake. Wil, it's a pretty simple name to say as a mistake, right? I remember he had green hair- lighter than yours, though. Anyway, it wasn't a real invocation, so I was still bound, but..." He looked at his palm, the one uncovered and unoccupied. "It was like being alive again. Hey, you're going to tell this as a story, right?" _When you go home,_ he did not say, but it was understood all the same. Rath blinked rapidly, for reasons he did not quite understand.

"Yes," he agreed, and Wil smiled.

"When we first met, uh..." He faltered, face falling again. "You were... the same age as she was when she died. And a prophesized. So, I just... I followed you." Suddenly, he cracked a kind of smirk, saying, "You know, she was two years younger than me, so it was always a little funny to me that you called me 'boy.'" Rath had no verbal answer, but when Wil squeezed his hand he responded in kind. "I don't know what else to say. You probably realized already I knew how to shoot the whole time."

"I realized." Wil's laugh was sheepish but real, up until he choked on it.

"Okay. Okay, I'm ready. Go ahead, prophesized, speak my name."

Rath did, and Wil's presence, fear and grudges and a crippling, desperate love, filled the air before fading away, leaving Rath with an empty leather glove tangled with one hand.

And then Rath was alone.


End file.
